"Surely, I'd adore to." She didn't smile.
"That's sweet of you. First answer some questions. Am I painfully conceited?"
"Well--no, you have tremendous vanity, but it'll amuse the people who notice its preponderance."
"I see."
"You're really humble at heart. You sink to the third hell of depression when you think you've been slighted. In fact, you haven't much self-respect."
"Centre of target twice, Clara. How do you do it? You never let me say a word."
"Of course not--I can never judge a man while he's talking. But I'm not through; the reason you have so little real self-confidence, even though you gravely announce to the occasional philistine that you think you're a genius, is that you've attributed all sorts of atrocious faults to yourself and are trying to live up to them. For instance, you're always saying that you are a slave to high-balls."
"But I am, potentially."
"And you say you're a weak character, that you've no will."
"Not a bit of will--I'm a slave to my emotions, to my likes, to my hatred of boredom, to most of my desires--"
"You are not!" She brought one little fist down onto the other. "You're a slave, a bound helpless slave to one thing in the world, your imagination."
"You certainly interest me. If this isn't boring you, go on."
"I notice that when you want to stay over an extra day from college you go about it in a sure way. You never decide at first while the merits of going or staying are fairly clear in your mind. You let your imagination shinny on the side of your desires for a few hours, and then you decide. Naturally your imagination, after a little freedom, thinks up a million reasons why you should stay, so your decision when it comes isn't true. It's biassed."
"Yes," objected Amory, "but isn't it lack of will-power to let my imagination shinny on the wrong side?"
"My dear boy, there's your big mistake. This has nothing to do with will-power; that's a crazy, useless word, anyway; you lack judgment--the judgment to decide at once when you know your imagination will play you false, given half a chance."
"Well, I'll be darned!" exclaimed Amory in surprise, "that's the last thing I expected."
Clara didn't gloat. She changed the subject immediately. But she had started him thinking and he believed she was partly right. He felt like a factory-owner who after accusing a clerk of dishonesty finds that his own son, in the office, is changing the books once a week. His poor, mistreated will that he had been holding up to the scorn of himself and his friends, stood before him innocent, and his judgment walked off to prison with the unconfinable imp, imagination, dancing in mocking glee beside him. Clara's was the only advice he ever asked without dictating the answer himself--except, perhaps, in his talks with Monsignor Darcy.